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Tag Archives: Mies van der Rohe
Scott: The mechanical fallacy
Perhaps the most eloquent, erudite, evocative denunciation of modern architecture came near the beginning of its ascendancy with Geoffrey Scott’s chapter “The Mechanical Fallacy” from his 1924 book, The Architecture of Humanism. Scott has the modernists dead to rights. The … Continue reading
Dickinson vs. Dickinson
Duo Dickinson is an architect in New Haven whose work, primarily private houses, is creative yet overwhelmingly traditional in appearance. I like his architecture very much. His firm’s portfolio and productivity are impressive. However, when writing and speaking about architecture … Continue reading
Romance and the style wars
On Sunday I saw the 1959 film The Diary of Anne Frank and, in its depiction of Anne’s friendship with the son of another family hiding with the Franks in the attic of a Dutch row house in Nazi-occupied Holland, … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture
Tagged #MeToo, Amsterdam, CCTV, Diary of Anne Frank, Mies van der Rohe, Palladio, Rape, Rem Koolhaas, Romance, Seagram Building, Social Mores, World War II
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The trenches of modernism
Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus school, died fifty years ago today. A new biography is out, Gropius: The Man Who Built the Bauhaus, by Fiona MacCarthy. Two major houses published it simultaneously, Faber & Faber in the U.K. … Continue reading
Rybczynski reviews Dystopia
“Witold Rybczynski on architectural PTSD and what James Stevens Curl gets wrong (and right) in his controversial new book” is the sub-headline of Rybczynski’s review of Making Dystopia, the magisterial history of modern architecture by Britain’s most accomplished architectural historian. … Continue reading
The mods’ survival explained
They cut the feedback loop. Nobody has done a better job of explaining the persistence of modern architecture than does Roger Scruton in his review of James Stevens Curl’s new book, Making Dystopia. In his review, Scruton sums up with … Continue reading
Architecture’s Three Stooges
Theodore Dalrymple, a British physician, psychiatrist and theorist of society, culture and design, has written a review of James Stevens Curl’s new book Making Dystopia for the New English Review. Dalrymple calls the book “essential, uncompromising, learned,” and especially devastating … Continue reading
Modern architecture is crazy
Among the most recent revelations of science in the service of architecture is that three of the most eminent founders of modern architecture suffered from mental illness. Le Corbusier was on the autism spectrum while Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies … Continue reading
Millais vs. Le Corbusier
Malcolm Millais, the author of Exploding the Myths of Modern Architecture, has written Le Corbusier, the Dishonest Architect, brought out in Britain by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, of Newcastle upon Tyne. It is a brave book and a necessary book, a … Continue reading
Old mods hard-wired to ugly
The two buildings above say all that needs to be said, really, about why traditional architecture is superior to modern architecture. Still, it is crucial to understand why modern architecture emerged in the first half of the last century, and … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture
Tagged Ann Sussman, Autism, Biometrics, Brain Disorders, Common/Edge, Katie Chen, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, PTSD, Walter Gropius
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